Back in December I posted about donations to MusicBrainz and a number of people requested a way to do direct bank transfers. Unfortunately our bank wasn’t well set up for this purpose and I began seeking a new bank that could help us accept direct bank transfers without having to pay huge amounts of fees. I’m pleased to announce that we are in the process of switching all of our banking over to Washington Mutual (WaMu)! WaMu has very kindly agreed to waive the incoming wire transfer fees (which are normally $10 per transaction) since we are a non-profit. With their support we can now offer direct bank transfers to all of our supporters.
If you’ve been wanting to make a donation to MetaBrainz, but weren’t able to do it previously, please consider sending us a donation now! To get our bank information, please contact us.
Also, I wanted to thank Jessica Rynerson of WaMu for her excellent help getting us set up and arranging for our wire transfer fees to be waived. Thanks very much!
UPDATE: I’ve removed our bank information since people immediately started to pass fake checks trying to rip us off. Fortunately the bank has caught all of these bogus checks!
MetaBrainz Blog 
How would this work if I would want to transfer money from the Netherlands to Musicbrainz?
In theory you should be able to print out the banking information above, take it to your bank and tell them you want to transfer money to that account. They should know what to do.
I’d be really interested to hear how this goes — in particular I would be interested to hear what kinds of fees they want to charge you.
I’ll look into it when / if I have more time later this week.
For international transfers it may be useful to have the IBAN (International Bank Account Number) and BIC (Bank Identifier Code).
I fear small non-Dollar donation from foreign accounts will still incur high fees. Maybe MetaBrainz needs a subsidiary with a bank account in the Euro-zone? 🙂
Are there any banks outside europe that can be addressed via IBAN?
SWIFT Code = BIC
Its my impression that the SWIFT code is the best thing I can do with a US bank account.
jellyfish: I would love to have an EU bank account. But I fear that’s a lot of work. Any shortcuts via a personal account can run serious risks of taxation issues. Not good.